News Not as Simple as It Looks
American Academy of Pediatrics recommends starting secondary schools after 8:30 a.m., but there’s much more to changing bell times than just a later pick up
WRITTEN BY ERIC WOOLSON
I
f there’s one thing transportation directors involved in setting later bell times for middle- and high-school students know about the process, it’s that it doesn’t happen overnight. And, sometimes, it doesn’t happen at all.
Between opposition from parents and others, hefty infrastruc-
ture outlays and other factors, a shift can take several years to occur or be derailed altogether. Peter Lawrence, director of transporta- tion for Fairport Central School District, knows this full well. His upstate New York school system with a service area of 26.5 square miles and just under 6,000 students transported considered but abandoned new bell times. “Conceptually, it seems like a very easy task that makes sense,
but there’s definitely a lot of challenges that aren’t so obvious until you do a deep dive into the data,” he said. Planning began with a half-dozen options, but quickly swelled to twice that much as additional stakeholders suggested more ideas. Fairport officials ran some initial numbers in-house and then called Transfinder to analyze each option. Te district’s buses rack up 1.1 million route miles traveled each
year and make an average of 4.8 runs per day. “If we were to change to a later start time (for secondary schools), we would significantly reduce the number of times we could use our buses each day, creat- ing inefficiencies with our bus fleet,” Lawrence said, noting various scenarios required between 19 and 68 additional new buses. Consideration was even given to combining a ninth-grade academy with the high school. Te approach would have netted a savings of 11 buses, but likely would have required adding a wing to the school building. Cultural obstacles were also “huge,” Lawrence added, ranging from disruption of extracurricular ac- tivities and longer ride times for children to the inability of older students to make it home in time to provide afternoon care for younger siblings. In Virginia Beach (Va.) City Public Schools—where high
22 School Transportation News • APRIL 2018
schools begin at 7:20 a.m., elementary schools at 8:10 a.m. or 8:40 a.m., and middle schools at 9:20 a.m.—the board’s consideration of different bell times elicited more than 31,000 responses in a survey of parents, students and staff. Director of Transportation David Pace said a consultant’s study
proposed five alternatives to the district’s current four-tier start and end bell times. Te different scenarios came with different transportation demands, ranging from no additional buses needed to 125 more buses. Te consultant’s study proposed five alternatives to the district’s
current bell schedules. Pace said a majority of parents supported the idea of younger students starting school earlier than middle and high school students, while a majority of middle and high school students expressed concern that later start times would affect athletics and other extracurricular activities. Each scenario also would have resulted in different vehicle needs, ranging from no additional buses to 125 more buses. But, Pace said the board’s decision to postpone the move for several years was necessary to give the district time to improve athletic facilities and make infrastructure and system changes. “If high school students don’t get out until 4 or 4:15 p.m., we’ll need lights on the fields for spring practice. We don’t have lights on our baseball fields, as some surrounding schools already do,” Pace explained. “By postponing the decision for three or four years, the board can start providing the funding for infrastructure instead of having to spend $15 million to $16 million upfront.” Meanwhile, the St. Paul (Minn.) Public Schools will launch new bell times in the fall of 2019 following a board vote last October. “It’s the ancillary things that are more problematic,” said Tom Burr, director of transportation for the 38,380-student district. He added that one of the district’s athletic directors warned that many in the community weren’t happy about the potential impact on athletics, including a likely shortage of lighted practice
PHOTO COURTESY FAIRPORT CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT
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